You Can't Miss It
I got that sinking feeling. The feeling you get when you're lost in the boonies. The feeling you get when you stop and ask some yokel for directions. They always end their convoluted instructions with those words that tell you you're screwed. "You can't miss it" they always say. Can't miss it. Yeah, right.
I got that feeling when Steve started his spiel by telling us he had "the perfect plan". In my experience there's no such thing, but I hadn't taken a score in a couple months. I figured that it might be worth my while to hear him out. Hell, it's not like it was costing me anything. Chuck and Tommy must've been in the same boat. They sat patiently in the kitchen of the single-wide where Steve was living and listened as he described his "perfect plan". Since there were only two chairs in the kitchen, I stood and leaned against the refrigerator.
"You guys know that bank on Route 4?" he asked.
"Which one? There's more than one bank on Route 4" Tommy said.
"Hell, Route 4 runs halfway to Canada. There's probably a couple dozen banks on that route" I said.
"The one right off exit 9 of I-90" he said.
I knew the one he was talking about. Technically, it wasn't a bank. It was a credit union. But I didn't see any reason to split hairs. Steve was looking somewhat impatient. I didn't want to bog down the conversation with a bullshit debate about the difference between banks and credit unions. Shit, I didn't know the difference myself. Didn't much care, either.
Steve continued. "We hit it at ten o'clock on Wednesday morning. The state employees get paid that day, and there'll be a shitload of money on hand. Well into six figures. One man drives, three go in. One works the cash drawers and the vault, the other two do crowd control."
Surprisingly, it wasn't a bad plan. The getaway should be a piece of cake. The bank was right near an on-ramp to I-90. To make getting away even easier, it was only a couple of miles from where I-90 intersected with another interstate.
I'd worked with Steve before. He was a dependable worker back in the day, but not the planning type. Not that he was stupid, but I wouldn't have expected his picture to turn up on a Google image search for "criminal mastermind."
He went on to explain how we would all get into the car and make a run up Route 4. We would then switch cars in a Wal-Mart parking lot, and then shoot over to the Home Depot parking lot and switch cars again. We'd drive north on 4 and turn east on Route 43 toward Massachusetts, switching cars one more time in a small shopping plaza along the way.
Chuck and Tommy looked like they didn't know what to say. The plan started out well, but turned to shit during the getaway. Since the other guys seemed hesitant to tell it like it is, I figured I'd be the skunk at the picnic and lay it on the line.
"It starts out as a good plan" I said, "but what's with all the car switches?"
"That's the brilliant part" he said. "The cops'll always be at least one car behind".
"Where are we going to get all the cars?" I asked.
"Steal 'em."
"That's four cars to steal. That's a lot of exposure, not to mention all the switches. Wouldn't it be easier to steal one before the job and take one on the way out?"
"You mean like car jacking someone in the drive-thru?"
"No, I mean take the manager's keys and drive his car out."
"That's fucked up" Steve said. "That way he'll be able to give the cops a perfect description of the car, plate number and all."
"Not if we do it in such a way that he can't call the cops until we're way outta Dodge."
Steve looked aggravated, but Chuck and Tommy looked intrigued, so I laid out my plan.
"We hit the place early, after the manager and a couple of employees show up, but before they open. We tie them up and get to work on the vault and the drawers. Once we're done, we take car keys from the manager or one of the tellers and swipe their car. Then we drive to a place to meet up with our other car. We hit the road and leave the area before the cops even know that the bank's been hit."
"Actually, I think it's a credit union" Tommy said.
"Same difference" Chuck said. "I'm liking that plan."
Steve didn't seem too enthusiastic about my idea. "Won't the doors to the bank be closed before they open for business? How do we get in?"
"We could smash the door in with a battering ram" Chuck said.
"No can do" Tommy said. "The doors are heavy-duty. They replaced 'em last fall after some old lady drove through the old ones. I guess she got the brake and the gas pedal mixed up."
Chuck laughed. "A do-it-yourself drive-through."
"So that's it then. Your plan's fucked" Steve said.
"Not quite" I said. "We hit as they show up. Jump them right after they unlock the doors. Take the first one to show up and wait for the rest of the morning crew to show up before we get busy on the cash."
Steve seemed aggravated. He made no attempt to hide his displeasure at my tinkering with his plan. "That's fucking stupid!" he said. "Don't you think they'd see us pull up as they walked toward the door and do a 9-1-1 on the fuckin' cell phone? How far do you think we'll get then?"
"We don't pull up then" I said. "We have the driver drop us off outside before sunrise and we hide and wait for the first arrival. Then we jump out and rush 'em as they open the door. We take a car as we leave and meet the driver at a prearranged location. Maybe in a shopping plaza or something."
"Yeah, they got big-ass bushes out front we can hide in. They're near the doors and everything" Chuck said.
"Bushes near the door? How stupid is that?" Tommy said. "Those'll be gone by the end of the day after we take that score. There won't be any bush in sight."
Chuck laughed. "Yeah, they'll bikini-wax that motherfucker. Brazilian-wax, even."
"Won't be our problem" I said. "By that time we'll have split the take and gone our separate ways."
Steve looked like he might be coming around. "Okay, say we do it your way. How do we know what time to expect them and how many are going to show up?"
"Pre-operational surveillance" I said. "Just like commandos do before they do a mission. We watch, take notes, and modify the plan to fit what we learn."
"I like it" Tommy said.
"Fuckin' ay" Chuck said.
"Okay" Steve said. We do it your way. We watch it Monday and Tuesday, hit it Wednesday."
"This Wednesday?" I asked.
"Yeah, that's payday for the state workers."
"No" I said, "we need to watch it a couple weeks and on at least one state payday so we can get the pattern down."
"I can't wait two weeks. I need that money now. We're hitting the bank this Wednesday" Steve said.
"Credit union" Tommy corrected.
"Whatever!" Steve said.
Steve sounded desperate. That was a bad sign. I have some rules I go by. Every one of these rules is absolute. I don't have them numbered or anything. They're all equally important. The one that came to mind at that moment was about desperate people. Don't work with them. Ever. Desperate people fuck things up. If by some miracle they don't fuck things up, they try to screw you when the job's done.
Steve had always been a little high strung, but I'd never seen him as squirrelly as he was looking then. I suspected that he was on crack, or maybe speed. He was just too jittery, and that was a bad thing. The only thing worse than pulling a job with a desperate man was pulling a job with a desperate man on drugs. I've never given a shit what a guy did on his own time, but he better be straight at post time. It was looking like Steve couldn't be counted on for that.
I put my hands in my coat pockets and looked at Steve. He had a wild look in his eyes. "Okay Steve" I said, "I don't know why you need the money in such a hurry, and I don't care. None of my business anyway. If you say you can't wait two weeks, then you shouldn't have to wait two weeks."
"Glad you see it my way" Steve said.
I gripped the .38 in my right pocket. There was no way Steve was going on this job. I couldn't afford not to do it, but I couldn't afford to do it with him. I knew he wouldn't just walk away if we told him to. I was going to have to terminate Steve's employment, and in this line of work there's only one right way to do that. My only concern was how Chuck and Tommy would react.
"Something else just occurred to me. With us hitting the credit union…" I looked at Tommy, he smiled his approval at my getting it right, "before it opens, we can handle the inside with only two guys. That's a total of three, including the driver."
"What the fuck are you talking about?" Steve said. "You trying to cut me out? This job's my idea. Fuck you motherfu…."
Before I could pull the .38 out of my pocket, there was a loud boom and splinters of wood and Formica exploded from the table. Steve was slammed back against the counter and fell to the floor in a sitting position. I could see the shock in his eyes.
Chuck looked at Steve and said "sorry bro, had to downsize. Nothing personal."
Steve fell sideways to the floor. His chest was covered in blood. The bullet must've hit him right in the heart. Chuck brought a .45 auto out from under the table.
Chuck looked at me and said "you guys weren't tight, were you?"
"No" I said "not really. We had worked together some a long time ago."
"Sorry man, I liked the score, but there was no way I was working with that fucker."
I kept my hands in my pocket and gripped the .38, just in case I was next on the list to be downsized.
"Yeah. He on speed or something?" Tommy asked.
"Maybe" I said. "either way, he was going to be a liability."
Chuck put the .45 into a shoulder holster under his left arm. I released the grip on the .38 and took my hands out of my pockets.
"So, two weeks from this Wednesday then?" Tommy asked.
"Anything worth doing is worth doing right" I said.
"Fuckin' ay" Chuck said.